


Simple

by MikeWritesThings



Category: Apex Legends (Video Games)
Genre: Established Relationship, Family Issues, Headcanon, M/M, Photographs, Reminiscing, Trans Octane | Octavio Silva
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:02:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24104869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MikeWritesThings/pseuds/MikeWritesThings
Summary: Elliott and Octavio share some family stuff.Or don't, for that matter.
Relationships: Mirage | Elliott Witt/Octane | Octavio Silva
Comments: 3
Kudos: 22





	Simple

**Author's Note:**

> thjis is for jean fuck you jean
> 
> tws:
> 
> mentions of alzheimer's  
> a very flippant mention of serious subjects bc its octane being octane  
> very brief description of sex
> 
> also some of my headcanons about mirage and octanes families are here i.e. what mirage's brothers are like and my headcanon of octane being mixed race (part indigenous people of mexico (nahua specifically) and part japanese-brazilian)

“If you move your thumb, thaaat’s...Matthew, before he got a haircut. God, I forgot he used to think mullets were cool.”

“He kinda works it, though,” Octavio commented, squinting at the picture in his hand. Four smiling boys, between the ages of six and fifteen, surrounding a woman with grease-stained overalls tied around her waist, revealing an old band tee that Octavio knew Elliott still had CDs for. “I mean, not everyone can pull off a mullet like that. I like it.”

“ _I_ almost had a mullet,” Elliott added in a whiny sort of voice.

“Well, what stopped you from getting one?”

“Because then I’d have to admit that I liked his.”

Octavio’s face scrunched up as he imagined his boyfriend with a mullet--he’d probably have to part his hair differently, or else it’d look really weird...nah, he couldn’t pull it off. Octavio wanted to see him try, though, out of sheer curiosity.

“So Matthew’s the oldest...he was, uh...fifteen here? So then we have Nathaniel, but we just called him Nate for short. He’s twelve in this pic” Elliott pulled out a less faded picture, one where the boys were all at least a decade older than the first photograph. “See, he’s the one here in the glasses...he changed the most, I think.”

“I like Matthew’s tattoos,” Octavio commented. The eldest had gotten considerably more muscular between the two pictures, and tattoos rippled across his powerful biceps.

“Stop saying you like Matthew’s stuff,” Elliott complained.

“Why? Jealous, cariño?”

“ _Yes._ ”

Octavio suddenly noticed something, and jabbed at the picture of the older boys. He recognized the scar on one of their cheeks, even if the person looked radically different now. “Is that a _buzzcut?_ ”

“It was Chris’s f-fault,” Elliott stuttered in embarrassment, carding his fingers through his hair in a self-conscious gesture. “He was s-supposed to cut my hair for me but he fucked it up! I had to get it all shaved!”

“You look weird,” Octavio laughed. With his hair buzzed like that, you could truly see how large Elliott’s forehead was. It was almost comical.

“Anyway,” Elliott cleared his throat, ignoring Octavio’s continued laughter. “This last guy is Chris, short for Christopher. He was only a year older than me, but he acted like he was Matthew’s age half the time. He liked bullying me.”

“I can tell,” Octavio snickered, looking at Elliott’s unhappy frown in the second picture.

“I’m trusting you with sensitive information, stop making fun of me.”

“No,” Octavio said, because he had just noticed the faded My Little Pony shirt that teen Elliott wore in the picture. “I don’t think I will.”

(It brought up the memory of one of the first times they had had sex; Octavio was riding Elliott, who was a mess beneath him, both a little buzzed from drinking. It had been really, really good sex so far, up until Octavio suddenly noticed something hanging in the closet to his left, its door wide open.

"This is probably an inappropriate question to ask while you're balls-deep inside of me," Octavio said, and Elliott snorted. "But _why_ do you have a My Little Pony shirt in your closet?"

"I can explain," Elliott grunted, and then he didn't.)

“That was my work shirt,” Elliott said now, but his face was starting to turn a deep shade of red, like he too remembered that incident. “Y’know, I always wore dirty shirts when I helped mom in the shop.”

Octavio gave a snort before he focused on Evelyn, her dark hair cut short. It was very curly, so curly that it seemed shorter than it actually was, bunched up around her face and hiding the age lines around her eyes and mouth. She was a short woman--in the picture Matthew towered over her, with Nate well on his way to surpassing her in height. Despite this, though, she was well-muscled, her biceps bulging beneath her band tee with her arms wrapped around her oldest sons.

It was a little weird seeing her like this young; her hair was currently gray with only the occasional streak of brown as she neared her sixty-sixth birthday, which she didn't seem to remember, but they weren’t here to talk about that. In fact, that was the sole reason Elliott had dug up these pictures from a box beneath his bed, ready to share his brothers with Octavio after avoiding the subject entirely for the past year they’d been dating--a particularly devastating visit to his mother at home had made him particularly emotional, and Elliott felt the need to share the memory of his brothers to someone who wouldn't forget any time soon.

Octavio could see why it had taken him so long to tell him in the first place though; he already sounded like he was about to cry.

“I know I said he bullied me a lot, but...” Elliott swallowed a little, fingers tapping against the slightly faded smiling faces of the Witt family. “Chris was my best friend growing up. I really miss him. _All_ of them.”

Octavio patted his boyfriend awkwardly on his arm, never quite the best at comforting people the way they needed it. Sure, he could suggest drinks or parties or motorcycle rides, but stuff like this kind of made him feel like he was out of his element. Didn’t help that he’d never gotten any sort of emotional comfort growing up, and it showed in his inability to comfort others. 

Elliott seemed to appreciate it though, placing his hand over Octavio’s with a quiet sigh. Their fingers intertwined briefly before Elliott moved to wipe at his eyes, sniffling a little.

“...Okay, don’t take this the wrong way,” Octavio suddenly said, because it was bothering him. “Why is Matthew, like, white?”

“He’s my half-brother,” Elliott explained with a light laugh at Octavio’s blunt words, and he was glad that that had managed to chase the sadness out of his boyfriend’s voice. “Different dad. My mom’s first husband--they started dating, got engaged, and then married all within a year, but then he left her for someone else. It was what made her decide to keep her maiden name even after she married my dad. Actually, my dad took _her_ last name.”

Octavio hummed. “And where’s your dad in all of these photos?”

He didn’t miss the way his boyfriend’s movements stuttered for a moment, and instantly regretted the question.

“...I don’t really want to talk about it, right now,” Elliott said in a small but clear voice. “...Are you gonna show me _your_ pictures?”

Right, Octavio had forgotten about those--three clutched in his hand, though he hadn’t looked at them in years. When he had moved out he had grabbed a box full of old letters his mom had written for him when she was pregnant with him, completely forgetting that he had stuffed pictures in there as well. He had gotten rid of most of them, but kept these in particular because...sentiment, maybe?

All three of them were pretty embarrassing, though, for different reasons.

The first one was a headshot of his mother, ripped in half but taped back together as delicately as he could manage. He had torn it up when he was seventeen, drunk at home and angry at everything, like teenagers tended to be, but had instantly regretted it because it was the only picture of his mom in the house. He had taped it afterwards as best he could, but he still felt flashes of guilt every time he looked at the split down the middle of her face.

“What happened to her?” Elliott asked, poking at the tape.

“My dad did that,” Octavio lied, because he didn’t feel like explaining his teen anger at being abandoned and neglected consistently throughout his life.

“Huh,” Elliott said, frowning. “...Is this your mom?”

“Yep,” Octavio said, reaching over and flipping the picture over in Elliott’s hands so that her name, written in his father’s chicken scratch, could be read. “Malinalli.”

“...Mali-what.”

“It’s Nahuatl.” He couldn’t claim to know too much about the Nahuas’ culture; his only connection to it was the fact that his mother was a part of it, as he’d never met anyone on her side of the family, and his father pretended that she didn’t exist. It still brought him a little bit of pride to say it, though.

“Oh, cool,” Elliott said, and flipped the photo back over to look at Malinalli. Her thick dark hair hung in a braid over her shoulder as she smiled serenely at the camera, eyes twinkling with good humor. She was very young, maybe twenty-two, and Octavio felt a lump rising in his throat as he remembered that this specific picture had been taken only a month before she died giving birth to him.

He still had all of her letters written to him, but those were far too personal to share with Elliott now. Or ever, really. He practically snatched the picture back from his boyfriend, who looked at him questioningly, but Octavio smiled like nothing was wrong and instead shoved a different picture into his hands.

“Oh my god,” Elliott said, laughing instantly. “Look at that Taylor Swift bob.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Octavio said. “I was thirteen and I looked hotter than Taylor Swift ever did.”

“I don’t think I like you saying that about thirteen year old Octavio,” Elliott said.

“Thirteen year old Octavio deserves to be called hot,” he replied dryly. “Two weeks after that picture is taken, he’s going to shave his head and it’s gonna look really bad.”

This photograph was from his school days, the same year he met Ajay. He, Ajay, and two other girls were posed in front of their school sign, all dressed in the uniform of pleated skirts and sweater vests. He had usually worn slacks under his skirt to school, but on the day this picture had been taken it was, like, a hundred fucking degrees outside. His black hair was indeed styled into a short bob, but Octavio didn’t know why Elliott was focusing on that when Ajay was right there with that _awful_ ponytail.

“So far this entire experience is just regrettable haircut after regrettable haircut,” Elliott said, before gesturing to the two other girls. “Who’re they?”

“I honestly don’t remember. They were probably boring.”

Okay, maybe he did remember _one_ of them; Caroline Brown, his first (and only) girlfriend from when he had thought he was bi, but that was kind of embarrassing to say out loud. He had spent two straight weeks clowning Elliott for the way his ex had broken up with him, and didn’t feel like having the favor returned, so he moved onto the final picture.

A family one he had been forced to take on his sixteenth birthday. His father, Kishou, stood to his left, tall, back ramrod straight and arms crossed over his chest. Some white lady stood to his right--she had lasted the shortest of all of Octavio’s stepmothers, and he _honestly_ did not remember her at all. He kept this picture not because he liked it, but because it served as a reminder of one of the greatest moments of his life--telling his dad to go fuck himself in front of all of his business associates, who had come to attend Octavio’s birthday party because it wasn’t _really_ his birthday party; just a business meeting in disguise. 

He relayed that story to Elliott, who laughed in all the right places and made Octavio feel warm inside. He at least had someone to spend birthdays with, now.

“What’s your dad like?” Elliott asked when their laughter died down, and Octavio kept smiling, but changed the subject.

“Dude, okay, once, when Ajay and I were in middle school--”

“Hey,” Elliott interrupted, pouting exaggeratedly. “I feel like you always do that.”

“Do what?” Octavio asked, feigning obliviousness.

“You know so much about my family, but you never want to talk about yours.” Despite his boyfriend’s exaggerated face, his eyes were serious. “Why is that?”

“‘Cuz I don’t like my family,” Octavio said bluntly. 

Elliott pursed his lips. “Is that why you ripped up your mom’s picture?”

“No, I ripped it because--” Octavio froze, before narrowing his eyes. “ _Hey._ ”

“I wouldn’t have judged you if you told me the truth!” Elliott said, giving Octavio his photos back, who then shoved them under his pillow to hide them from view, the back of his neck burning red at being called out. “Y’know, stuff happens. People get...sad.”

“Smooth.”

“I’m sure you had your r-r-reasons,” Elliott said, as if trying to assure himself.

Octavio didn’t like talking about either of his parents for a myriad of complicated reasons. The guilt and anger he felt towards his mother couldn’t be explained in one sitting, and telling Elliott he simultaneously craved and rejected his father’s attention? Forget it. He wouldn’t understand, and Octavio didn’t feel like explaining. He just wanted to pretend none of it bothered him, because that was what he did best.

Elliott kept his secrets. Octavio could keep some, too.

“Wanna go get dinner?” Elliott offered, having sensed the change in the room. He wasn’t particularly articulate, but he was always in tune with Octavio’s moods, which he was thankful for. Talking was boring sometimes. And overwhelming.

"Sí, por favor."

Elliott stood up, muttering that he was going to go get ready and do his hair, which Octavio scoffed at because he didn’t want to have to wait, but once his boyfriend was out of his room, took his pictures out from beneath his pillow to stare at his mother some more.

He really had no connection to Malinalli at all, aside from looking a little bit like her. His hair was thick and black like hers, whereas his father’s was thin and more brown, and they both had the same nose shape. Aside from that, though, he shared everything else with his father. The same general eye shape, face shape, the same angular eyebrows that made them both have semi-permanent Resting Bitch Face. His skin was a lot lighter than hers and so were his eyes. He sometimes wished he had more in common with her, but maybe that would be more painful.

It also didn’t help that he still felt plagued by a sense of guilt eight years after choosing a new name for himself, every time he looked at the neatly written letters she had addressed to his deadname. 

He wondered if she would have been disappointed with his decision to transition. He wondered if she was upset in the afterlife that he had tossed aside one of the only things connecting him to her, the name she had given him while pregnant.

 _Your name means defender of the people,_ his mother had written to him in one of her earlier letters. He had read it so many times that though it was initially folded up, it now lay completely flat. _It’s an inspiring name, I think. Your father wanted to name you Marie--a cross between our respective Latino and Asian cultures, but I picked one from my culture. I think it will suit you better. If I should get anything at all, I should get the ability to name my daughter._

The muted frustration about their unhappy marriage in all of the letters written to him just made him feel even worse when he had chosen his new name. He felt like he had discarded a key part of her that she had left with him, one of her only forms of rebellion, so he had gone with a Latin name when choosing his new name. It still made him feel weird though when he opened up the box, letter upon letter with his deadname staring back at him, and he dropped the old photos on top of them with a scowl.

Elliott had it easy. Not with his family, but with being able to describe it all so simply. Oh, one of his brothers had a different dad. Oh, Chris bullied him but was also his best friend. Oh, his mom had dementia. 

It was all so simple. The only mystery, the only unexplained thing, was his father and maybe the current whereabouts of his brothers. But his emotions were clear-cut: he loved his family, and he missed them, and he was melancholic because of the absence of his brothers and his mother’s memory.

Octavio wished he could explain his family as simply as all of that. He wished he had a mom like Evelyn Witt. Wished he had siblings like Elliott did. Wished he had a lot of things, but he supposed he had no other choice than to be content with what he had.

Family-wise, at least. Right now he craved a rush, to forget about all of those icky family feelings, and he had an excellent idea.

“You ready to go?” Elliott asked, popping his head in to check on him. Octavio pulled him down a little to kiss him square on the lips and said,

“I’ve picked where I want to go for lunch.”

“Huh? Where?”

“I saw some place claiming they had Solace’s spiciest wings. Let’s give them a try.”

“Wh--you know I can’t handle hot stuff!”

“And yet you handle me,” Octavio said, and started tugging his boyfriend towards the front door.

“Oh, sh-shut up.”

He supposed just Elliott was fine, for now. He could accept Elliott’s simple family if it meant never having to bring his own up again; he wouldn't have to think about the guilt he felt towards his mother or the simultaneous anger if he just accepted Evelyn as his future mother-in-law. He was sure the feeling was mutual; Evelyn loved him, when she could remember him.

Elliott was his family, now. They could work through the rest later together.

**Author's Note:**

> the mlp shirt is an inside joke LMAO
> 
> sorry if this is...not good? i dont rly care for miroctane anymore cuz there arent any good fics so my interest faded 😔😔 (except u kj if ur reading this ur fics are punk rock ily)
> 
> anyways....miroctane but with trans octane because theres so much cis octane in the miroctane tag that its actually disgusting smh. this is why cryptane >> the superior ship. trans octane agends THRIVES and its not boring
> 
> this is for u jean. i hate ur stinky butt. never make me write miroctane ever again. u made me do this so im legally allowed to clown them


End file.
